April 2010

Yakezie Roundup: Countdown to Baby Edition

As of today I am 37 weeks into my pregnancy. And while I have 3 weeks to go until I hit my due date, my doctor has informed me that my little guy can decide at anytime to make his appearance. Oy! I never really went through a nesting period so now I’m feeling under [...]

{ 14 comments }

Blogging Update with Revised Goals

When I launched this blog a little over 3 months ago I had no idea how to run a blog or measure it’s success. I just had a story and a new frugal lifestyle that I wanted to share with others. Three months later it’s safe to say that I still don’t know that much [...]

{ 26 comments }

Why the Waste?

The following is a guest post by Gary Foreman of The Dollar Stretcher. Could a few changes reduce your grocery bill by 25%? Wasting food is particularly hard on a food budget. You’ve already spent the money, and you get zero benefit from it when it hits the trash. How much do we waste? In [...]

{ 6 comments }

Baby Steps to a Sustainable, Self-Sufficient Lifestyle

It seems like everyday we hear of another food recall or a study is released telling us some artificial ingredient in our food has been found to cause cancer. The state of our food production system is appalling. Large agricultural companies continue to implement measures that drive up their profits and drive down the nutritional [...]

{ 15 comments }

Transition From the Corporate World to Your Own Business – Lessons Learned

Today’s post comes from Mr. Credit Card of www.askmrcreditcard.com. He read my story about how I went from earning six figures in a corporate setting to being an entrepreneur. He’s been through a similar situation is here to share it with us. I read Mrs. Frugal’s life story and it really resonated with me. In this [...]

{ 11 comments }

Do Your Friends Share Your Financial Values?

I was catching up on my reading this weekend and came across this quote from Lynn Truong, the Co-Founder of WiseBread.com, in Money Magazine: “Good money management is a lifestyle. If you surround yourself with people who share the same values, you’re more likely to stay on track.” While I agree with this quote whole-heartedly, [...]

{ 20 comments }

Yakezie Round Up – Retirement Edition

I’ve been thinking about our retirement plans a lot lately. Even though we’re still a ways away from that phase of our life (I’m 36 and my husband is 39) we’re in that critical time where if we don’t have a clear plan in place and goals to focus on, we could fall short of [...]

{ 5 comments }

The Survey Project Update #1

Last month I wrote about my foray into online survey taking and promised to update you on my progress once a month. As far as taking surveys this has been a very slow month. I joined the Yakezie Challenge at the beginning of the month and as a result I’m spending a lot more time [...]

{ 0 comments }

What Is Your Family’s Money Dynamic?

On Easter Sunday we had dinner with my husband’s family. Over dinner the conversation turned to my brother-in-law’s truck problems. He’s in construction and relies on his truck to get him from job to job. Money is tight for them so having his truck out of commission is a big deal. He shared with us [...]

{ 13 comments }

Net Worth and Goals: March 2010 – Up 5.8% and making great progress!

Each month I provide an update on how we’re tracking toward our goals. I break it down between Net Worth and Goals for the year. Net Worth: The market was very kind to us this month and we saw a another nice boost to our 401K. We also sold off stock purchased through the Employee [...]

{ 6 comments }